Mycotoxin fungal plant diseases and climate change :State of the art and beyond

This report is one of the outcomes of a project conceived to promote the Scientific and Innovation System of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in Italy, through mobility and collaboration between the Joint Research Centre and the University of Udine, funded by the European Commission, European Social Fund, Operational Programme 2014/2020. The project investigates the interaction between crops, pathogens and microbial communities as a possible mitigation strategy. Particularly this report aims to examine a few topics behind the project, by outlining promising new lines of research that could help further improve food safety in relation to fungal toxins, difficult to detect and prevent from contaminating crops. Managing these toxins is made more difficult due to the impact of climate change on their ability to move from crops to crops. The European Union so far has adopted a combination of strict regulations and advanced technologies to forecast, prevent or mitigate outbreaks, but there is room for improvement. The methods under discussion take advantage of artificial intelligence models, cross-referencing of meteorological data, and metagenomics